Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Alex Wong
Topics: Donald Trump, US News
Callum Jones
Donald Trump has explained an eerie 'warning' he gave about Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
The POTUS spoke to hundreds of Navy personnel at the Navy 250 Celebration on Sunday (October 5), where he repeated bizarre claims he could have prevented the devastating terrorist attacks had people listened to him.
While the Republican president went on to discuss the date for a UFC event at the White House, he also used the speaking opportunity to discuss a previous warning he had issued over over the founder of al-Qaeda.
“Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Centre, and I said, ‘you gotta watch Osama bin Laden!’” Trump said.
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“And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true. But I said one year before to Pete Hegseth, I said one year before.”
The president continued: "I said one year before, in the book I wrote – whatever the hell the title, I can’t tell you.
“But I can tell you, there’s a page in there devoted to the fact that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden and I didn’t like it and ‘you gotta take care of him’.
“They didn’t do it, a year later he blew up the World Trade Centre.”
The president went on to say he’s got to ‘take a little credit’ as ‘no one else’ will give it to him. "If they don’t give you credit, just take it yourself," Trump added.
While Trump may be suggesting it, it doesn't seem as though the 79-year-old actually predicted the 9/11 attacks.
It was in early 2000, some 18 months+ when Trump wrote a book called The America We Deserve, where he briefly referenced bin Laden.
The book did however identify bin Laden as a danger to national security in the US, though didn't exactly predict the events of 9/11.
Trump wrote that the US was facing a ‘bewildering series of smaller crises, flash points, standoffs, and hotspots'.
Speaking of bin Laden, Trump wrote: "One day we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan.
"He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it's on to a new enemy and new crisis.”